Some Puerto Ricans are turning to family businesses for solutions to the island’s job losses, but many young people are struggling to find full-time employment.

By Carolina Astrain
Latino Reporter

Rafael Carmona’s fingers know the touch of tobacco sheets very well.

The bearded Carmona, who wears a straw brim hat and works in front of a banner touting  his family business, Tabacalera Ramos, has been rolling cigars since he was 9 years old. That’s when his grandfather first introduced him to the trade.

Now in his retirement, Carmona survives the economic downturn by doing what he loves for income.

“I’m continuing the tradition,” said Carmona, 59, who works with his wife and children. “Today, young people don’t have much of an option, but I think that’s important to reach into your roots for solutions.”

For Carmona’s family, the solution to the current economic downturn was the family business. But around Puerto Rico, where unemployment rates hit 14 percent in May, young people are being forced to consider a variety of options.

In April 2009, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 73.1 percent of the unemployed are between the ages of 16 and 34. In the last year, overall unemployment went from 9.7 to 14.7 percent in May, the latest figure available.

Stateside, Michigan has the highest unemployment rate at 14.1 percent, just a 0.2 percent difference from Puerto Rico.

Of Puerto Ricans working on the island, 58.2 percent are employed by private companies — mostly American — while 27.2 percent are employed by the government and 15.5 percent are self-employed.

Eliseo Torres, 21, an economics major at The University of Puerto Rico, works for the Puerto Rican legislature as an economic advisor. Torres said he has noticed a large amount of layoffs within government-sponsored businesses in the past year.

“The main employer in Puerto Rico is the government, and that’s the problem,” Torres said. “Most of the money goes to salaries, instead of benefits like vacations, health care.”

Torres said the problem for people his age — early to late mid-20s — isn’t getting a part-time job, it’s getting a full-time job.

José Raúl Perales, the senior program associate for the Latin American Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said high unemployment is nothing new to the island.

“Every time, there’s a recession in history, the economic downturn hits the island hard,” Perales said. “People who go into mom-and-pop businesses do pick up some of the slack, but this remedy isn’t flexible enough to solve anything.”

Victor Rodriguez, 23, graduated from Sacred Heart University in the spring with a degree in journalism. He has a paid internship this summer at the island’s largest newspaper publication, El Nuevo Dia, but he’s also working full-time at Chili’s as a waiter.

Rodriguez said he knows the market for jobs in newspaper journalism is bleak, so he’s going back to school for a degree in sociology and plans to pursue a career in social work.

“For me and many Puerto Ricans, it’s not about getting my dream job,” Rodriguez said. “It’s about stability.”

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